Page 88 of When She Dreams

Maggie rolled onto her side to face him and levered herself up on one elbow. She leaned over and kissed his chest. When she raised her head, she was smiling a sensual smile, and he was pretty sure her eyes were actually glowing.

She was warm and soft and damp and inviting. The intimate scent of satisfying sex drifted in the atmosphere. This was as good as it got. A smart man would not shatter the mood with unnecessary conversation. In his experience, after-the-act discussions were a bad idea. The last time he’d had one that had appeared to go well he had found himself driving to Reno with a beautiful woman to start a doomed marriage.

Keep your mouth shut, Sage.

But people rarely take good advice, even when they give it to themselves,he thought then.Why be the exception to the rule?

“What did you mean when you saidthis is so real?” he asked. “You hadn’t even finished yet.”

“I didn’t need to finish to know it was real.” She threaded her fingertips through the hair of his chest and tugged gently. “It felt real. That was all that mattered.”

He thought about that for a moment and then abandoned the effort to decipher what the hell she was saying. He pulled his arm out from under the pillow and turned onto his side to face her.

“What doesrealmean?” he said.

“It felt like real passion. Shared passion.”

“As opposed to?”

“Being assaulted by a vampire.”

He sat up fast. “I may not be the most exciting man you’ve ever met, but I hope to hell that going to bed with me was better than being attacked by a vampire.”

“Sorry.” She lay back against the pillows and looked up at him. “I probably used the wrong visual image.”

“Think so?”

“You’re getting mad, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Not mad,he thought.Hurt. Probably just his pride.Okay, mad.

“Yes,” he said.

The sensual warmth faded from her eyes. The serious, watchful expression returned.

“When I refer to a vampire, I’m talking about the kind of man who is attracted to a woman like me because he thinks that if he has sex with her he can somehow control her, and that if he controls her he can use her.”

“A woman like you?”

“An extreme lucid dreamer,” she explained.

“You’re talking about men like Oxlade and Guilfoyle?”

“Oxlade isn’t interested in having sex with me. He just wants to run experiments on me. Arthur Guilfoyle would be happy to seduce me if he thought that would get him what he wants, but it would just be business as usual. Make no mistake, both men are extremely annoying, but I wouldn’t classify them as vampires.”

“You seem to know a lot about men like Oxlade and Guilfoyle.”

“I’ve spent years booking appointments with therapists and doctors and analysts who claim to be experts in dreams. Some tried to be helpful. Others were frauds and cons. Several took a genuinely scientific or medical approach. A few were delusional. But there is another category.”

“The vampires?”

She touched his jaw with the tip of a finger. “You are a very smart detective.”

“I told you, I keep up with the literature of the profession.”

“Yes, you did mention that.”

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